From Death Row to Freedom
By Ginny Hildebrand
     Where have you been and what have you been doing for the past several years?
     Maybe you just moved to Pittsburgh, started your first job or switched careers. Did you graduate from high school, or attend college? Did you travel to China or Cuba? Maybe you had a baby or got married.
     Or maybe you just spent some time on death row.
     What? Don’t be ridiculous, you think. You didn’t murder anyone, no one would ever even dream of accusing you of murder. Well, three fellow Pennsylvanians, William Nieves, Ray Krone and Thomas "Hank" Kimbell, Jr. also didn’t murder anyone. In fact, Ray Krone, for example — boy scout, choirboy, no-detention-in-high-school-kid, Air Force Sergeant, and mailman — is probably a further fit from anyone’s profile of a murderer than you or me.
     But that didn’t matter. While you and I were building our lives, these three men watched life slipping away from them on death row. When Ray, William and Hank tell their stories throughout Pennsylvania as part of the "From Death Row to Freedom: Voices of Innocence" speaking tour this fall, many will see that these men are a lot like people we know — relatives, ourselves.
     They hope that their horrific experiences will help spread grass roots activism to a breadth and intensity that can begin to stop executions in this state, first by forcing the State Senate to pass SB 25 placing a two-year moratorium on executions, and second, by pressuring Gov. Schweiker to commute death sentences for the 26 people on death row identified by the Department of Corrections as mentally retarded. The governor could commute their sentences to life in prison with a stroke of his pen today.
     As part of the speaking tour, sponsored by Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty (PAUADP), William, Ray, and Hank will be available to speak to students, congregations, community groups and the media in Southwestern Pennsylvania from October 18-20. If you are interested in having these men speak at an event, please contact Ginny Hildebrand at 412-241-6087. For more information about the tour, please check out the PAUADP website at www.pa-abolitionists.org.
     William Nieves and Hank Kimbell will also be featured speakers at the September 27-28 death penalty conference sponsored by the Pittsburgh Chapters of the ACLU and PAUADP. A broad array of organizations including the Thomas Merton Center, NAACP and many religious and student organizations are co-sponsoring the event.
     The conference sponsors believe that right now is both a critical and opportune time to mobilize opposition to capital punishment.
     The time is critical because Pennsylvania has one of the largest death row populations in the country with one of the most disproportionate percentages of African-American and Latino inmates. Both the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates boast an eagerness to get the executioner to work on the 245 condemned men and women. As William Nieves recently said, "When my re-trial was granted, my death warrant would have been signed in 30 days, and I would have been killed by lethal injection." Lives are in the balance. Time is of the essence.
     And the time is also opportune. The pendulum of public opinion is swinging against state murders. Support for executions has dropped from an all-time high of 80 percent in 1994 to 67 percent in 2001. Opposition jumps much higher when life-without-parole is posed as an alternative to the death penalty.
     The growing number of exonerations of people on death row is a major factor. "If 100 people sentenced to death have been found wrongfully convicted, how many more people don’t we know about that aren’t lucky enough to have. . .DNA to change their fate?" asks Diann Rust-Tierney, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, also a scheduled speaker at the September conference.
     The DNA test that exonerated Franklin Smith for rape and murder came too late. He died while on Florida’s death row.
     While some states are providing for DNA testing, others are allowing DNA evidence to be destroyed before it is tested. The whirlwind surrounding the issue of DNA along with the documentation of widespread prosecutorial suppression of evidence, police coercion of witnesses, and incompetent defense attorneys is creating a nationwide revulsion against the way race, class and cynical political ambition rip the blindfold off of Justice. The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is just the best known of these cases.
     Moratoriums on executions in Maryland and Illinois and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June declaring unconstitutional the execution of mentally retarded defendants are other clear indications that public sentiment is turning against state executions.
     The September 27-28 conference events at CMU and Pitt will provide an exceptional opportunity to help all of us think this issue through from many angles. Saturday workshops will provide a clear agenda for mobilizing against the death penalty in Pennsylvania, including helping to organize the "Death Row to Freedom" speaking tour and an October 23 statewide rally in Harrisburg to demand an immediate moratorium on executions.
     For more information call the ACLU 412-681-7736.
     The conference is sponsored by the Greater Pittsburgh ACLU and Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty.
     Co-sponsors include the Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church, Alliance for Progressive Action, Amnesty International – Pittsburgh and CMU and University of Pittsburgh student chapters, Black Radical Congress, Western Pa. United Methodist Conference, Calvary Episcopal Church, Carlow College, Duquesne Innocence Project, Methodist Federation for Social Action, NAACP – Pittsburgh, Assn. of Pittsburgh Priests, Pittsburgh Solidarity, Religious Society of Friends, Sisters of Divine Providence, Sisters of Mercy, Students in Solidarity – University of Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Thomas Merton Center, United Methodist Witness of Pa., United Methodist Women – Western Pa., University of Pittsburgh School of Law, YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh – Center for Race Relations.